


almost (sweet music)

by opheliaes



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: ADHD, Art, Art meets STEM, Autistic Spencer Reid, BDSM, Ballet, Ballet Dancer, Borderline Personality Disorder, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Jewish Character, Chinese Character, Death, F/F, F/M, Female Character of Color, Jewish Spencer Reid, M/M, Multi, Murder, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POV Original Female Character, POV Spencer Reid, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Rough Sex, STEM, Serial Killers, Spencer Reid Needs a Hug, Strangers to Lovers, Violence, fast burn, spencer is smitten, they're just horny sorry guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:27:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28204581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliaes/pseuds/opheliaes
Summary: -i wouldn't know where to start, sweet music playing in the dark-There's a serial killer loose in the Pacific Northwest targeting dancers.And yet, Spencer can't help but find himself smitten with one of the soloists of the Portland Ballet Theatre.Maybe, just maybe, she's a little smitten with him too.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	almost (sweet music)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dedicated to my amazing boyfriend who is on the spectrum and to my friends who are on the spectrum. One flaw of Spencer Reid!AO3 is I find rarely do Spencer POVs include his almost canon autism. I wanted to not only rectify that but also make content for people of color like me (Chinese-Filipina) who tend to be excluded from fanfiction. This fanfiction has been sensitively read multiple times by said friends and boyfriend on the spectrum. If you're autistic and find something to be inaccurate/incorrect, please let me know in the comments and I will edit immediately. I was a ballet dancer for 11 1/2 years and will be drawing on that knowledge to be as accurate as possible to the ballet side of things. I also headcanon Reid as Jewish and that will be a part of this story. My boyfriend is also Jewish and with his permission has been consulted on all relevant aspects of writing this narrative.  
> I hope you will enjoy this story no matter who you are.

Spencer had never seen anything quite so beautiful in his life, even through the smudged glass of a ballet studio window. She was more beautiful than a perfectly executed Fibonacci sequence, more pleasing than the fundamental theorem of calculus. The way she moved suggested thousands of years of evolutionary knowledge, stored in one being. This woman, this dancer, whoever she was, had the power of a predator and the fragility of prey. How could he not stare? She made his heart rate speed up and his blood pressure rise like it did during a car chase or a particularly satisfying interrogation. She made the constant buzzing in his brain and endless internal narration, both of which annoyed him frequently with random tangents and stories, go nice and silent. She made him want to flap his hands and soothe his rapidly firing neurons. Even under the hard lights of the studio, Spencer could easily admire the sleek lines of her body and her instinctual coordination as she moved as if she was a swan or some other bird from the Anatidae family. He was a man of logic, science, engineering, statistics, facts.

Yet the way she danced...

What could Spencer say? He was smitten.

“Careful there, boy genius. If that jaw gets any lower it’ll hit the floor.” Morgan teased him good-naturedly, gently bumping his shoulder into Spencer’s. “Haven’t you ever seen a ballet class before?”

He took his eyes off the pretty dancer for a moment to glance at his friend. The smirk written across Morgan’s face bothered him for some reason; he wanted to wipe it off. Spencer challenged him. “Have you?”

From the deep flush crawling up the back of Morgan’s neck and ears and the way he averted his eyes from Spencer’s gaze for a split second, the answer was yes. “You have!”

“It was for football!” Morgan tried to defend himself quietly, but it was too late. The rest of the team’s attention had already been drawn to the way he stammered and the self-conscious twitch of his hands, so uncharacteristic for a man of his confidence and stature. “Ballet promotes flexibility and endurance. You should try it sometime, maybe you’d loosen up.”

Emily shot a smirk in his direction, crowding closer to Morgan to tease him further. Just as she opened her mouth, the lean director of the Portland Ballet appeared in the doorway to the studio, his stern countenance silencing the chatter of the BAU like a teacher shushing fourth graders. The man’s sharply angular cheekbones caught the fluorescent lights as a thin smile pulled at his face. A vaguely European, perhaps French accent, more an impression of an accent than a pronounced one, flowed out of the director’s mouth. “Welcome to the Portland Ballet Theatre. I am Artistic Director Peter Archambault. How can we help you today?”

Ordinarily, Hotch would have stepped in and spoken first, but something unnameable pushed Spencer forward. “Uhm, we’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and uh…” Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. He did not need this happening right now, right here. In front of everyone. And in front of her boss.

Hotch tossed a minuscule glance his way before smoothly taking over. “We’re the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.” He paused for a moment to flash his badge as the rest of the squad hastened to do the same. It made sense, logically. Not only did badges establish authority but ensured the cooperation of civilians in most instances. In the United States, one in ten adults falls victim to scams every year and scams involving government agencies were the most common. While tax scams mentioning the Internal Revenue Service were the most common of all, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services trailed in a close second. It would not surprise Spencer if people frequently claimed fraudulent association with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Thus, the badges... “...Dr. Reid…” At the mention of his name, he snapped back to attention. Exactly how much time had he lost? “And this is Penelope Garcia, our technical analyst.” Ah, introductions. Spencer did his best to refocus on the thread of the conversation, despite the overwhelming instinct to hyperfocus on the woman moving fluidly behind the director. 

The rest of the team murmured hellos and he joined in with a soft greeting. It was too much. All too much. The lights, the girl, the case photos... The slight twitches of his flexor digitorum superficialis increased. He might have gone into full-on hand flapping were it not for the years of memories of being bullied, harassed, even attacked. No, no, no. Stay here, he told himself. Stay with everyone. Just as Hotch was just finishing up his usual spiel, Reid managed to catch the tail-end of it. “We have reason to believe that a person of interest in a case we are investigating may have had contact with some of your employees. We’d like to conduct interviews with them in order to gauge who precisely may have had contact and if they are at risk.”

Body language was something he struggled with, he’d own up to that. With time and experience, he’d gotten better at it. There was something interesting in the countenance of the director though that caught his attention. A flicker of his eyes, the way he closed his body off to the team in a microsecond. Spencer couldn’t put his finger on what exactly was wrong but he took note of it to mention to Hotch at a later point.

Director Archambault, whose distinguished last name was French, then Latin, and then High Germanic in origin and first found Limousin, nodded quickly before responding. “Of course. Though I do ask you to not interrupt our company classes and rehearsals to interview any dancer in particular. This class you are observing now will be let out in a few moments. I do hope your investigation can wait that long?” The archness of his last question did not go unnoticed. He theorized perhaps it was a response to Hotch’s tendency to dominate and control conversations, even with civilians who were only tangentially related to a crime. It made them a more efficient team overall with one personality taking dominance over the others…

His attention was caught once more by the flow of bodies moving in and out of the studio. Dancers were packing up their bags and zipping up black hoodies with “Portland Ballet Theatre” emblazoned across the back. Spencer tuned back into the conversation only for a moment, to determine whether or not his skillset was needed at that particular time. It was not. Hotch was going over the set schedule for the rest of the day and assigning individual personnel to every BAU team member to interview. Keeping subconscious tabs on the conversation while consciously focusing on what he wanted was second nature to Spencer at this point. His delight at not being needed for the moment, so he could go back to watching the almost hypnotic grace with which each dancer moved, surprised Spencer.

Focusing on her was as easy as breathing. She stood at a comparatively statuesque 5’7 inches, perhaps 5’8 inches. A small mental voice converted that from inches to centimeters, putting her at over 170 centimeters. Her peers stood at around 5’3, 5’4 on the taller end of the scale. This unnamed woman who’d captivated him so thoroughly and unexplainably drew closer and closer… “...and Reid, you’ll be with… Alice Li.” Before Hotch could even finish the sentence, Spencer was present once more.

He nodded briskly. “Alice Li?” The question was more to confirm with Hotch so he would remember the correct information, but it had the wonderful dual purpose of turning the object of his focus towards him in recognition of her name being spoken aloud. Her hair was reminiscent of the wing of a Corvus corax, but maybe he was the real raven with the way Spencer kept tracing his eyes over the glint of light bouncing off her neatly tied up hair, he joked to himself.

“That’s me. And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?” Alice smiled at him as she said that. The average human resting heart rate was 80 beats per minute, with a normal range from 60 to 100. His average resting heart rate was 72 beats per minute precisely. When she looked at him, Spencer counted 96 beats per minute. Interesting.

His hand met hers in a firm shake. Spencer was close enough to smell her perfume, the top notes worn down by sweat and exertion as the creamy, rich base notes intoxicated him. “I’m Dr. Reid. Nice to meet you.”


End file.
